


Terrible As An Army With Banners

by nenya_kanadka



Series: Emperor, Admiral [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Canon is your warning, Catharsis, Consensual Sex, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2018, Grief/Mourning, If You Squint - Freeform, Masochism, Rough Sex, brief references to rape and torture, hints of Michael Burnham/Philippa Georgiou, threats as foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 04:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13539573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nenya_kanadka/pseuds/nenya_kanadka
Summary: Into the silence, the Emperor speaks. "I killed him."Kat's eyes snap to her face. She hadn't known till this moment how much she'd wanted to be able to tell the story of Gabriel's betrayal to Philippa and have her look back at her likethis. The other Philippa holds Kat's gaze, and smiles a grim smile, and it ought to terrify her that she stares back andwants.Spoilers for 1x13 "What's Past Is Prologue" and the teaser for 1x14 "The War Without, The War Within."Written before viewing 1x14 so minor aspects may be jossed (but less than I expected!).





	Terrible As An Army With Banners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [R_S_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_S_B/gifts).



> This is all [actonbell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell)'s fault, including the [fabulous title](http://biblehub.com/songs/6-10.htm). Fic is canon-compatible through 1x13 "What's Past Is Prologue," and written after seeing Kat in the teaser for 1x14 but before 1x14 has aired.
> 
> Current state of mind: Everything is Georgiou and nothing hurts. <3

"There was...one other thing." 

Acting Captain Saru's lanky stride stops just outside the doors of the _Discovery_ 's conference room, and there's a pause in his hurried summary of his crew's extracurricular activities since Gabriel Lorca disappeared with the ship nine months ago. For a moment, whatever happened to him out there to give him confidence recedes, and he's back to the diffident Kelpien Kat remembers. 

He throws Specialist Burnham a look, and she picks up the narrative, lifting her chin and turning to face Kat. "Admiral, we—there was an unexpected rescue." She sucks in a breath. "It's my responsibility; I understand that. But I wasn't able to leave her." 

Kat raises an eyebrow. "Her?" 

"Philippa Georgiou." 

_Philippa._ Kat freezes, staring at Burnham's squared jaw and defiant eyes as if that will make the words make sense. Philippa died. Sixteen months and twenty-three days ago, Philippa _died_ on a Klingon warship, and Kat has spent sixteen months and twenty-two days coming to terms with it. 

Before the Klingons captured her, she'd dreamed sometimes that Philippa had come back. She'd be sitting in Kat's front room with a cup of coffee and a smile, a PADD in her hand and her uniform jacket over the end of the couch. Sometimes Kat could kiss her before she woke up; in the worse dreams, they'd be making love when Philippa's face would go death-grey and she'd begin to cough blood, just before the Klingon knife pushed through her chest and Kat came awake screaming. 

After the Klingons captured her, Kat knew her lover was dead. 

Her eyes must widen with the shock. She starts forward automatically, barely feeling Saru's cautioning hand on her shoulder. "Admiral Cornwell—" The worried note in Burnham's voice, too, is lost in the thudding of her pulse. 

Philippa. _Here?_

The conference room doors slide open. The room is dim, just like the other Gabriel used to keep it. There's a woman standing at the viewport, and her silhouette is so familiar it makes Kat's throat ache. She turns, like the woman in Kat's old dreams, and Kat's cry of _Philippa!_ dies in her throat. 

It _is_ Philippa; she has no doubt of that. There's no way to counterfeit the grace in her movements or the tilt of her chin or the way Kat's heart leaps in her chest. But it's a Philippa clad in gold and deep black, her hair straighter than Kat's, and her face—her eyes— 

"Cornwell," the woman says, cold as ice, and Kat doesn't need Burnham's murmured "I'm so sorry," to know that she's made a terrible mistake. 

"Who—" _Who are you, who_ ARE _you, how dare you take her face, you—_

The woman's lip curls in bitter amusement. "I am Emperor Philippa Georgiou, formerly of the Terran Empire. I am told there's no such thing here." 

That terrifying place that Burnham and Saru say the _Discovery_ barely escaped. The world Gabriel—Lorca, the one who betrayed her—came from. Death. Slavery. Horrors that make her time in Klingon captivity seem almost quaint. And Philippa at the helm of it all, a goddess of death standing astride the destruction of worlds.

"Don't you know me?" the woman says.

Kat wants to wake up.

* * *

Somehow, Kat gets through the debriefing. Lorca's Xanatos gambit, his deceptions, his appropriation of _Discovery_ for his coup against the woman at the other end of the conference table. The other Paul Stamets and his perversion of the mycelial network. Burnham's bravery and quick thinking; the exemplary performance of _Discovery_ 's crew. She notes that they don't say anything about the Klingon or two they have in the brig, and they don't mention the tormented man who may or may not be Lieutenant Ash Tyler. She's certainly not going to bring up those complicating factors in front of the genocidal dictator who wears Philippa's face.

She wants to hate her. There's an arrogance when she speaks that Philippa never had, and she looks at Kat as if she's debating what to do about a poisonous snake. If Kat focuses only on the gold breastplate and thinks of her as the Terran Emperor, she can almost slide into the role of war strategist she's had so much practice at these last few months. If she can just think of her as another L'Rell—a brilliant adversary whose skills may be useful, someone who is simply her enemy and has no qualms about turning on her at a moment's notice—Kat can get through this. 

And then Burnham begins to speak about their final escape from the Emperor's flagship. It doesn't take much to imagine this woman in a battle for her life. All she has to do is add her razor-sharp air of danger to Philippa's finesse on the dance floor. Burnham's report is as straightforward as a Vulcan's, but underneath it Kat can hear real respect for this version of her captain. "Our plan succeeded," Burnham says, and Kat can tell she means hers and the Emperor's, not just hers and Saru's. "We took Lorca by surprise."

Kat catches Saru's eye, because she doesn't want to look at the Emperor or see whether Burnham looks the way she sounds. He doesn't have to speak for Kat to know that all four of them in this room are thinking of her Philippa. 

Into the silence, the Emperor speaks. "I killed him, for what he did to Michael." 

Kat's eyes snap to her face. There is naked anger there, and satisfaction, and infinite softness as she says Burnham's name. Kat can't look away. A harsh thrill goes through her and she thinks, _You hate him too_. She'd been able to admit to her Starfleet therapist how she felt about her Klingon captors—the damage she wanted to do, the way the torture had warped her sense of self, how she wanted to hurt and hurt and hurt them back—but this had cut too deep. She hadn't known till this moment how much she'd wanted to be able to tell the story of Gabriel's betrayal to Philippa and have her look back at her like _this_. 

And Philippa wouldn't, she knows she wouldn't. Philippa wouldn't _hate_ the way the Emperor clearly does. Philippa was too good a person for the cruel, sharp joy Kat feels at the thought that someone paid that bastard back for leaving her to rot on a Klingon prison ship. If she told _this_ Philippa that the other Gabriel had, in essence, raped her, and that that's almost better than thinking her old friend had sold her out for his own gain—well, she might look at her the way she's looking now. 

The other Philippa holds Kat's gaze, and smiles a grim smile, and it ought to terrify her that she stares back and _wants_.

* * *

"I'd like to see the prisoner," Kat tells the guard on the Emperor's door. They've given the Emperor a junior officer's quarters—no comms, but all the other comforts Starfleet would normally provide for a guest who's not the god-empress of a horrorshow. But even if Burnham feels the same ambivalence that's making Kat's hands sweat, they're clearly taking no chances. The guards are armed, seasoned security officers, not raw ensigns playing honour guard.

The guard gives her a doubtful look, but Kat's an admiral. She can go where she wants. The thought stiffens her spine as she steps into the room to face Emperor Philippa Georgiou alone.

The Emperor is sitting on the Starfleet-white couch in the living area, her head tipped back against the cushions and her eyes closed. They snap open as the door slides shut behind Kat. With the minutest shift in posture she moves from exhausted former despot to live predator. 

"I thought you'd come," she says, with a slow smile that sends Kat's adrenaline spiking.

Kat swallows. "I wanted to ask you something." She's put her hands behind her back so the Emperor can't see how tightly her fingers are digging into her other wrist. There's a silence, broken only by a lift of the Emperor's eyebrows. "What happened to my Gabriel?"

The Emperor gives a careless shrug. "There was nothing left of the _Buran_ but stardust." 

Kat nods tightly. "There wasn't in our universe either. If they switched places..." 

"Then I suppose he's dead. Does that bother you?" That watchful gaze again. Kat can't imagine how even the other Gabriel Lorca could get anything past this woman. 

"Of course it does," she snaps. She ought to go. This was a stupid idea. 

The Emperor's voice is like barbed silk, and catches her before she can turn away. "But that's not what you came to say to me." 

"I—" 

The predatory Philippa is on her feet suddenly, and almost in Kat's space before she can take a breath. God, she's fast. "You came to say," she says in that liquid voice, and somehow Kat's back has hit the wall before the end of the sentence. "You came to say _thank you_." 

Kat gasps. She stares into those black, black eyes and it's all she can do to breathe.

"What did he do to you, Katrina?" The Emperor is very close now, and the hand that's not trapping her against the wall is running very slowly up and down the zip of her uniform. 

She would tell the real Philippa anything. This one—all she can force out is, "He tried to kill me." It's fear that's making her tremble, that's all. Wiring for fear is so close to arousal. That's all.

"Of course he did," the Emperor says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world—like Kat hasn't felt ashamed of that night, for _not knowing_ how wrong things were before they happened. Before he pulled a gun on her. Before she fucked him. Before the rest of it.

"Do you know," the Emperor continues, stroking Kat's neck with a single finger, "who my Cornwell was?" 

Kat takes a breath. Tries, tries to think, over the buzzing in her head, over the faint pressure of the Emperor's fingertips at her pulse. "Someone who's dead," she says. Had the Emperor killed her? No—but— "And you don't care." 

The Emperor laughs. "She was my chief interrogator," she says. She sounds almost proud, and Kat feels sick. What kind of a human being—is Kat capable of that kind of barbarity? Is that what it means that she's here in the Emperor's quarters, panting under her touch, not even thinking of calling for help?

She turns her head away, and the Emperor says, "She was the one who first convinced me to trust him." 

"That," Kat manages, "that was stupid of her." 

"Yes," the Emperor says, with a voice like icicles, and Kat _is_ afraid now. She must look just like the Katrina Cornwell who betrayed this Philippa. And she's here, where the Emperor could do anything—it doesn't matter that she's not armed— _anything_ to her. The Emperor slides her hand down Kat's torso, and half of Kat's brain wants to hit her in the face and run, and the other half wants to grab her hand and shove it hard against her own cunt.

She locks eyes with the woman who isn't Philippa, and doesn't move an inch.

"I hurt her," the other woman says, low and harsh, "Myself. I hurt her quite a lot." Her fingers dig into Kat's hip, and Kat bares her teeth. Not so different from L'Rell, after all. The Emperor leans forward and that beautiful golden armour presses into Kat's breasts. Her teeth are sharp, her eyes are black with lust, and Kat _knows_ she's done everything she says and more. 

It's not like Gabriel. No false promises, no misdirection. This woman wants her, and she wants to hurt her, and—

"Katrina still made me come like no one else." 

Kat lunges forward and kisses her. It's all teeth, and she's probably growling, and she doesn't care. She shoves off the wall, gasps out "Computer, privacy," just in time to muffle the crash of the gold breastplate as Kat spins them around and slams the Emperor against the bulkhead. 

The Emperor's hand is a fist in her hair, she's kissing her back furiously, and Kat has just enough time to swallow the _Philippa_ that's trying to claw its way out of her throat before her feet are swept out from under her. She hits the rug almost hard enough to knock her breath away. The Emperor stands over her, glorious and terrifying, backlit by the low lamps that glint off her armour. 

And then she's on her, one knee between Kat's thighs, hot merciless pressure against her core, her forearm an iron bar across Kat's upper chest. Her grin is dagger-bright and there ought to be blood on her incisors. "Is this what you came for, Federation Katrina?" 

"Fuck you," Kat snarls, and pulls her down. 

They tumble across the floor, tearing at each other's clothing. Kat can't find the fastenings for the breastplate, but Philippa rips it off with practiced fingers, and she thinks—one of the last clear thoughts she has—that that probably means she isn't going to kill her. Then she's panting, biting the hand Philippa has over her mouth, and Philippa's other hand shoves past the waistband of her uniform and hard, perfect fingers drive into her. 

For the first time in months, the fact that everything is wrong doesn't matter. _You're not you,_ she thinks, and _Philippa, Philippa_ , and it's hot and rough and she wants to claw this woman's skin off until the woman she loves comes back to her. Till the war ends and she finds out how to turn back time, till she's whole again. She wants to fling herself against the murderous edges of the Emperor's power till there's nothing left of her. She wants to forget everything but the sting of the Emperor's teeth, the scent of Philippa's skin, the taste of her breasts, the bright heat of the way she comes—just like Philippa—she's alive, she's _alive_ , and Philippa isn't, and— 

"I hate you," she rages into Philippa's shoulder, clinging to the shreds of her sanity, "I hate you, I hate you," and Philippa's hands dig hard into her arms as Kat grinds herself desperately against her, and she says "I know," and Kat laughs like a wild thing, anger and grief and love and lust roaring through her like a plasma breach. 

_I love you, Philippa, Philippa, I love you._

* * * 

Afterward, she replicates a new uniform, and the Emperor drapes herself across the couch and watches her without a word. She doesn't look at Kat like she's prey anymore.

Afterward, she thinks she'll talk to Burnham. She thinks there are things they can say to one another that no one else would quite understand. 

Afterward—she isn't the other Katrina. She won't do to anyone else what was done to her. But she will win this war, and she will gather her people around her, and God help anyone foolish enough to stand in her way.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  she’s not here, and I’d rather see her lovely  
> step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on  
> all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and  
> glittering armor.  
> —Sappho, [The Anactoria Poem](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/anactoria-poem)  
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
>   
> See also [**this amazing fanart**](http://nenya-kanadka.tumblr.com/image/176294898770) by [bohgeyboss](http://bohgeyboss.tumblr.com/post/176077434147/two-character-full-colour-commission-for). <3


End file.
